Ride

Ride sealed their fate as shoegaze pioneers early on, although they eventually broke away from its trademark dissonance. Soon after forming in 1988, the Oxford quartet of art school friends recorded a demo that caught the ear of Creation Records’ cofounder Alan McGee. Ride quickly mastered their distinct brand of cacophonous bliss in a trio of blistering EPs, followed by their 1990 full-length debut. Nowhere became an instant indie classic, built on drummer Laurence Colbert’s manic thrashing, Steve Queralt’s liquidy bass, and singer/songwriter team Andy Bell and Mark Gardener’s relentless squall of guitars. They brought that overdriven intensity to 1992’s slightly more melodic Going Blank Again, but by 1994’s psych-rock pivot Carnival of Light, the band was beginning to splinter, and they officially split before dropping 1996’s Bell-dominated Tarantula. It took nearly 20 years for Ride to reunite, but they came back strong, reshaping their classic early-‘90s sound with modern pop touches on 2017’s Weather Diaries and 2019’s This Is Not a Safe Place, two more reminders of just how influential Ride were—and still are.